


Something Else

by ashesandhoney



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: AU - Jordie Lived, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9472898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: In an alternate universe, Jordie Rietveld survived the plague and he and his brother started from the bottom as farm hands on the outskirts of Ketterdam. Kaz made a vow, after they lost it all to a con artist in the barrel that they would build something better than what they had and better than the barrel rats could imagine.The Wraith, on the other hand, has things to burn down.





	

The pleasure house was filled with the cloying scent of flowers. The perfume clung to his skin and made him feel dirty. He wouldn’t have chosen this place, it was uncomfortable and wasn't worth the trouble. The pleasure houses were hardly upstanding places of business but as the largest ones had burned one by one over the last year and a half, the remaining ones had become almost as difficult to get into or out of as prisons. Getting a spot in the wide front room of the White Rose where the pretty girls and boys fluttered around the clientele was difficult.

Kaz resented having had to work so hard to choke on rose perfume and mediocre champagne but it was going to be worth it. He swallowed down the sickly sweet smell and repeated that to himself. It was going to be worth it. The bribe to the booking agent, being rescheduled three times in spite of the bribe, having his briefcase and his pockets searched like a thug at a tavern. It was tolerable because it was going to be worth it in the end.

Kaz Rietveld was a legend in the making.

He would be a merchant king by the end of the decade and the plan to get him there was already well in motion. He had taken a failing sugar business and not only turned it around but expanded it. He was on his way to building an empire. His older brother Jordie was the first name on the Rietveld letterhead but everyone knew that it was Kaz you dealt with and it was Kaz who had made the name mean something.

Rietveld meant something these days.

On paper, Kaz dealt in money and property and items that fit into the hulls of ships, but really he dealt in people. He was good because he read people as they were, not as he hoped or wished they could be. Jordie gave people the benefit of the doubt. Kaz did not. He knew which merchers had a taste for which vices and he knew how to use that to his advantage. If he didn’t know, he hired someone to find out. If there was no doubt, then he needn't worry about who was benefiting from it.

His soon to be business partner had a pretty blonde girl sitting halfway in his lap and his third glass of champagne in hand. In a few minutes George Batavier would want to go upstairs and before he did, Kaz would recommend closing their business so there was nothing to distract him from enjoying his evening. The contract in his briefcase outlined very favourable terms for a shipping agreement and the man would sign it without reading it too closely and Kaz would be able to finally add exports to his portfolio. There was only so much money to be made if your trade only went one way.

He glanced at the man and the girl and then away. If he rushed it, it would be obvious. He could wait.

It would be worth it.

His eyes scanned the room, taking note of who else was here among the prostitutes. Who else was willing to risk getting caught in one of the Wraith's fires for a little bit of fun? Kaz was making a show of enjoying the wine and the food but he had little interest in the girls. Someday he'd make a good match and an advantageous marriage but until then, he had other things to worry about than whether or not he caught some pox in a pleasure house. Even without the threat of murder or arson, the pleasure houses weren't worth the trouble.

Jordie thought he needed to meet more girls and get a head start on finding that match. Jordie met plenty of girls and he fell in love as easily as breathing. He was going to marry the wrong one but Kaz didn't have the heart to try and convince Jordie to choose a wife who could further the business. Jordie was a romantic and all the practicalities in the world wouldn't change that. So Jordie would marry for love and Kaz would marry for money and the Rietveld empire would continue to grow. Two years from now, Batavier's failing shipping company would be Rieveld's successful shipping company and from there, the sky was the limit.

Across the room, a waitress caught Kaz's eye and he nodded. She was small with wide eyes and black hair tied back tightly. She didn't have the ingratiating smile of a pleasure house employee and her uniform was poorly tailored. She was probably new and rushed through her training which meant that the White Rose was having trouble keeping staff on. They were one of the last of the legal pleasure houses to operate on East Stade and the rumours were that they wouldn't last much longer no matter how much carefully concealed security they hired. The Wraith moved through security like smoke.

"Could we have another plate of these little pastries?" Kaz asked when the waitress reached their table.

He hadn't taken note of what they were, he should have. He needed Batavier to believe that he was enjoying the food and drink as much as Batavier was enjoying the giggling girl. The waitress looked over at the two of them and then back at Kaz without a hitch in her expression. Definitely new and she didn't like this job at all. A Suli girl just arrived on one of the caravans, perhaps. Trying to put down roots and make a life for herself in Ketterdam. If she found this distasteful, she wouldn't last long but none of that was Kaz's problem.

"More wine?" she asked.

"Yes, please," he said.

She let her eyes fall back on Batavier again and then she turned and disappeared into the swirling bodies and silks. She didn't smile once during the exchange and ten minutes later, their champagne and pastries hadn't come. New waitresses who were bad at their jobs weren't worth his time but something about her kept pulling on Kaz's attention.

"Shall we conclude our business so I can go seek better shrimp puffs and you can seek," Kaz paused for a knowing look, "Other things?"

Batavier looked relieved at the offer and as predicted, signed Kaz's contract without so much as reading it over. There was nothing in it that they hadn’t previously discussed, it just skewed a little in Rietveld’s favour in the details. Kaz left him to enjoy his other things and headed for the door. In the foyer, he caught sight of a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye but when he turned toward the stairs to see what it had been, there was nothing there. His nerves prickled and he pulled his coat tighter, checked his briefcase and hurried out into the street.

He didn't get nervous. If you got nervous, people treated you like a child. No one did business with children. His business depended on him being better than this. So he squared up his shoulders and shook off the unease and walked home through the dark. It had been a good night and he had no reason to be worried.

By mid-morning, the next day, while Kaz sat in his office and double checked his shipping manifests before sending them off to Batavier's clerks, the White Rose was burning.

The first pleasure house to burn to the ground was the Menagerie. There had been only one death that day and it hadn’t been due to the heat. Helene had been dead before the blaze caught, killed by one of her girls who had stabbed her in a fit of madness. There had been others there to testify to it. It had happened in the main room. The girl had stabbed Helene three times and then turned and ran. They hadn't been able to find her. Not the security of the Menagerie or the Stadewatch.

She had vanished like a ghost.

They talked about her. It was all over the newspapers. She had been quiet and had kept to herself. She had been there for two years. She was an indenture. She had seemed perfectly normal up until the moment she sank a cheese knife into her employer's throat. There were facts to know but the facts had never painted the entire picture. Her name was Inej Ghafa, that was on the indenture papers but that name didn't hold the public's attention. No, Inej Ghafa wasn't the kind of name that struck fear into people's hearts.

She was known to the newspapers and the barrel rats as the Wraith.

Four more pleasure houses had burned over the last year. The staff were given warnings. Little squares of paper dropped in through their windows with a little knock on the glass. Sometimes they tried to fight the fires but they tended to be set in more than one place. The third one to burn, one of Pekka Rallins', had managed to survive. The fires had been put out fast enough. The proprietor hadn't been so lucky, dying before the blaze caught. Everyone said that Pekka himself was on her list.

Kaz knew all of that because it was worth knowing it all. The barrel rats weren't his concern. He had made it his life's mission to make sure that the barrel rats were not his concern. Pekka Rollins had conned he and Jordie out of the money that should have made them rich. When they'd picked themselves up and waited out the plague picking fruit on a farm outside the city for pennies a day, Kaz had made a vow. They were going to climb far beyond anything that Rollins could imagine.

They were going to be better than him, better in every way.

Rollins was a rat.

Kaz and Jordie were something better and they wouldn't be fooled again. Brick by brick, saved penny by saved penny, investment by investment, Rietveld would become a name that people knew because they were smart and honest and careful. They did not con the innocent out of their money. They did not deal in gamblers and whorehouses. They were good and honest and better. Brick by brick, Kaz would build something better than Rollins would ever know.

Kaz was a businessman, Jordie was a romantic, Rollins was a rat, and Batavier was an idiot.

The Wraith was something else entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> At one point, I had planned to do a multi-chapter on this but it isn't going to happen. I'm going to leave it as a one shot that sets up the world but I don't think I'll come back to it.


End file.
